JOURNAL 
OF 
The New York Botanical Garden 
Voi. XIII May, 1912. No. 149, 
WILD PLANTS NEEDING PROTECTION.! 
I. “JACK IN THE Putrit” (Arisaema triphyllum (L.) Torr.) 
(With Pate XCIIL) 
When the trees are unfolding their fresh green leaves in May 
and June, and the violets and spring-beauties are in bloom, Jack- 
in-the-pulpit may be found in moist woodlands and on shady 
banks, where the corte is soft ae loamy. It isa perennial herb, 
and if | ives many years and attainsa 
height of three feet, with a subterranean corm as large as an apple. 
This corm has given to the plant the name of “Indian turnip” 
though it is not edible, when raw, for it has an acrid taste, 
irricating to the tongue, on account of the acicular crystals of 
calcium oxalate which it contains, known as raphides. It propa- 
gates by forming smaller secondary corms around the older ones 
and in this way new plants are started. It often bears no fruit 
in the vicinity of New York, not only on account of the depreda- 
tions of children, but because it is dioecious and the proper insect 
visitors, on which it is dependent for pollination, seem to be 
lacking. Usually the leaves turn yellow and the plant disappears 
in June and July, though this varies in different portions of its 
range, which extends throughout the Eastern and Central states, 
as far north as Nova Scotia and Ontario and south to Florida 
and Louisiana. It bears what would appear to most children 
to be a single large flower, but is really a cluster of small simple 
flowers, borne at the base of a fleshy club-shaped spadix, which 
is enclosed by the convolute base of the spathe, the summit of 
1Tilustrated by the aid of theS F he P. ti f Native Plants. 
67 
